The elysia karacter Discrete Class A Stereo Saturator has now been modelled by Brainworx and made available as a plug-in. The hardware unit has become known as “The Coloring Box” by fans because of the various ways in which it fattens and adds sparkle to tracks, karacter’s unique sounds separate it from the pack. For Pro Tools users it is available as AAX DSP and AAX Native continuing Plugin Alliance's drive to support Pro Tools HDX users.

The elysia karacter plug-in is actually two plug-ins bundled together...

1. karacter mix - This has been designed to provide a straightforward set of controls for treating mono and stereo tracks.
2. karacter master - This has been designed to be more surgical and features independent controls for left and right channels or, in MS mode, mid and side channels and is optimised for processing full mixes and stereo stems and subgroups.

Both plug-ins offer three different saturation modes for painting your project’s tracks with colourful harmonics.

1. Saturation mode is for a gentle fattening and emphasises odd harmonics, intended for mastering, and adding subtle size to instruments such as acoustic guitar and grand piano.
2. FET Shred mode mimics the distortion of a driven tube amp; it adds a relative boost to even harmonics that transforms clinical-sounding electric guitar and bass tracks into bad boys.
3. Turbo Boost - According to Brainworx, this should have a warning label on it! Intended for waging total destruction, it hard-clips signal tops for radical processing of tracks and mutilating sound design.

Feature Summary

• Faithfully models the sonic qualities and behaviour of elysia’s discrete class A stereo saturator
• Two plug-ins—karacter mix and karacter master—are included to optimise your workflow
• Saturation mode gently colours full mixes and pristine acoustic instruments
• FET Shred mode emulates the pleasing distortion of a driven tube amp, adding grit and size to electric instruments and more
• Turbo Boost mode radically transforms tracks with severe, asymmetric clipping of positive signal phase’s peaks
• karacter master plug-in provides surgical mid-side processing of stereo mixes, subgroups, tracks and stems
• Drive control adjusts the level of distortion from mild saturation to destructive overdrive
• Colour control tilts the spectral balance of generated harmonics to create a variety of saturated timbres
• Price $199

System Requirements

• Supported Plugin Formats
  • AAX DSP, AAX Native, AU, AAX AudioSuite, VST2, VST3
• Supported Operating Systems
  • Mac OS X 10.8 through 10.12
  • Windows 7 through 10
  • Pro Tools 10.3.10 or higher or any VST/VST3/AU-compatible host running on a supported operating system
• Mac
  • Intel CPU only (minimum 2 GHz recommended)
• PC
  • Intel-compatible CPU with SSE2 instruction set (Pentium 4 compatible or higher; minimum 2 GHz recommended)